


Kindred Spirits

by seasonschange_butpeopledont



Series: Book Club [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Eddie conveniently forgets to mention he is a vampire, F/M, Fluff and pining, one singular swear, reader is maybe a little too into Jane Austen, shy and somewhat lonely reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28870716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasonschange_butpeopledont/pseuds/seasonschange_butpeopledont
Summary: The second meeting of your late-night book club brings you and Eddie to an enlightening conversation about what exactly makes Jane Austen novels so appealing.
Relationships: Eddie (BtVS)/Reader
Series: Book Club [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117241
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Kindred Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completely self-indulgent follow up to Book Club. I am planning on turning this into a series of oneshots set in the same universe. I just have so many ideas for these two. Also, I would like to formally apologize to anyone who reads this and watches Buffy. I’m still only on the first season so my understanding of Buffy vampires is very shaky, but I tried to research as much as I could.

_ “Same time next week?” _

The words echoed in your thoughts. 

After your first meeting in the courtyard, you hadn’t seen Eddie anywhere on campus. You looked for him more often than you cared to admit, checking over your shoulder during lectures and scanning the dining hall at lunch. A part of you wondered if you were going crazy; if the brown-eyed boy with cold hands and big dreams was just a figment of your imagination, someone you’d made up in your sleep-deprived, homesick state. 

You’d almost convinced yourself that you’d made it all up by the time Monday rolled around. You knew that you shouldn’t get your hopes up. You’d never had much luck with making friends; your shyness made you rather forgettable to most people you met. You didn’t know why you expected this to be any different. Eddie had probably forgotten all about you by now. But… you were so sure something significant had passed between you, like somehow the two of you were kindred spirits. Eddie was shy and a bit awkward, like you, but he made you feel at ease. The sincerity in his eyes when he listened intently to your every word, like you held all of the secrets to the universe, assured you that he truly cared about what you had to say, and that your rambling was no bother to him. It was as if, for once, you could talk for hours and never feel like you were saying too much or have to worry that you were boring him.

Whatever that connection was, the novelty of it thrilled you, and you were counting down the days, hours, and minutes until your vaguely planned meeting on Friday evening. 

You’d found yourself at the library first thing on Monday morning, checking out Maugham’s monolithic  _ Of Human Bondage  _ and lugging it around with you throughout your classes for the day, intent on giving it another shot. The pages seemed to turn easier this time around, with thoughts of Eddie’s rambling about his fascination with the novel lingering in the back of your mind as you tried to cram in whatever reading time you could in between classes and after finishing up your homework. You easily lost yourself in the tragic, complicated life of Philip Carey, but the week still seemed to drag on forever.

* * *

_ Same time next week _ . That was what you had said, but now that you were finally tucking your things into your backpack and preparing to head back to the same tree you’d sat under last Friday night, you felt your stomach twisting itself into knots.  _ What if he doesn’t show?  _ You would surely feel like an idiot if you had gotten your hopes up and manufactured this whole potential for nothing, and you would be even more disappointed at the reminder of how forgettable you seemed to be to those around you. 

When you arrived at your spot beneath the tree in the courtyard, you unceremoniously dropped your backpack on the ground, checking over your shoulder once, twice, eager to find any sign of the only other member of your late-night book club. You wiped your palms on your jeans, carefully taking a seat at the base of the tree and reminding yourself to  _ get a grip _ . He might not even show up. You put your headphones over your ears, pulled your book from your bag, and allowed yourself to be swept away into another world.

* * *

On Monday night, Eddie found himself sneaking out of his dorm room. The library on campus had closed a few hours ago. Considering his new nocturnal lifestyle, he’d had to relax his ethical code when it came to things like breaking and entering… And murder, for that matter, considering he now routinely fed from his fellow students and the other unsuspecting residents of Sunnydale. He’d discovered his new talent for mischief by accident. He hadn’t meant to break the lock on the door of his dorm room, but he’d forgotten his keys one night and found that his RA was, apparently, a disturbingly heavy sleeper. With no one to help him and the sun beginning to creep through the windows in the hallway, he’d given the doorknob one final, desperate twist, and it had snapped the metal mechanism with frightening ease. Ever since that day, Eddie had been using his vamp-strength to his advantage. He’d snuck into the dining hall for the occasional midnight snack (he’d discovered that while he didn’t  _ need _ food in the way that he used to, he still enjoyed the occasional turkey sandwich and a can of Surge from the vending machines down the hall), into his professors’ offices to copy down lecture notes (and  _ only _ the lecture notes) to  _ hopefully _ save him from flunking out in his first semester, and, of course, into the library. He was lucky that the campus seemed to have a distinct lack of security cameras, or he’d surely have one very confused campus security guard on his hands. 

He didn’t mind being the only one in the library. He crept through the shelves slowly, dragging his fingers along the spine of each book on the middle shelf. He smiled to himself when he passed the worn-out copies of works by the Bronte sisters amongst the literature section, your teasing about his choice of coming-of-age novels coming to mind as he did so. 

It was something that had been happening quite a lot since he’d spoken to you last week. He felt so grateful to have met someone who made him feel seen in the way that you did. It was so rare that he felt like people noticed him. Sunday and her lackeys treated him like a doormat, using him as an errand boy rather than including him in whatever trouble they were getting into- not that he minded, vampire takeovers weren’t really his style anyway. His RA hadn’t even noticed that Eddie had been turned into a member of the undead. He felt like a ghost. 

There was a lingering fear in the back of Eddie’s mind that wondered if you had meant the parting words you had spoken to him last week. Did you really want to see him again? Would he wait around all night like a lovesick puppy only to find that you, like everyone else in his life, had forgotten his existence? Worse yet, a part of him wondered if he should  _ want  _ you to show up. He was a vampire, after all, and even if he had no intention of harming you, he knew the dangers that lurked in the shadows. He should have told you to stay far, far away, rather than making plans to meet up with you again. 

But, perhaps selfishly, Eddie wanted to see you again. He wanted to talk to you about life and books and what a nightmare Professor Walsh seemed to be, and he wanted to feel like he belonged somewhere for just a small moment in his life. It wasn’t too much to ask for, was it?

His fingers finally reached the title they had been searching for. He plucked it from the shelf, inspecting the cover.  _ Pride and Prejudice _ . Your favorite. 

* * *

Eddie spent his days locked away in his room, curtains drawn, thumbing through the worn pages. His nights were spent roaming the campus for his next meal or occupied by Sunday and her lackeys, but during the day he was confined to the four walls of his dorm room. He was glad that he had gotten a single dorm; he wasn’t sure how a roommate would have handled his strange new lifestyle. 

He spends hours in front of his computer, an iMac G3 his parents had gotten him for his birthday last year. He writes them emails, telling him about all of the fun he’s supposed to be having in college. It’s what they want to hear, he knows, and he’d rather them believe their son was adjusting normally. Eddie tells them all about his new friend, Lizzy Bennett, and all of the stories about her odd sisters, and talks about his old friend from high school, Philip Carey. They never seem to notice that the lives he’s describing are fictional, rather than real ones. He wonders what would happen if he told them about  _ you _ . 

By Friday evening, he’s pacing back and forth in front of his door. The sun is still peaking out over the horizon, preventing him from leaving the safety of his room. He’d changed his shirt three times, though he didn’t really know why. All of his clothes were rather plain to begin with. 

Finally, the sun dipped below the horizon, relieving him from the abundance of time he seemed to have on his hands to make himself an anxious, nervous wreck, and Eddie eagerly made his way towards the courtyard, his borrowed book in tow. 

* * *

Eddie took his seat beneath the tree, careful not to disturb you. Yet another side-effect of the vampirism, he was able to move in almost absolute silence, seemingly appearing out of nowhere with his equally inhuman speed and agility. He sat for a few moments in the quiet, observing you and the way that your brow creased in concentration as you absorbed the words on the page. He could hear the music from your Walkman playing over your headphones, a song he happily recognized as one included amongst the many CDs he had stacked on his desk. He’d thought you were pretty since the first time he saw you, but even more so now that he could observe you in such peace. 

He hadn’t intended to startle you, but he quickly realized his mistake when you let out a squeak, jumping away from him quickly, ripping the headphones from your ears, and attempting to wield the hardback in your hands as a weapon. He held up his hands in surrender, giving you a moment to process that it was only him. 

“Sorry,” He cringed, feeling guilty for having startled you so badly. You were awfully jumpy for someone who hung out in strange places at night. 

“ _Holy shit_ _!_ Eddie, you can’t just sneak up on people like that in the middle of the night! Are you trying to kill me?” You admonished, a hint of your own embarrassment in your voice. He could hear your heart beating rapidly in your chest, and attributed it to the scare he’d given you rather than letting his imagination run wild with possibilities.

“No!” Eddie replied a bit too quickly. “No, of course not. You just seemed… preoccupied. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

You had already begun to relax a bit, your shoulders slumping comfortably as you returned to your previous sitting position. 

“I was hoping I would see you again,” You revealed a bit shyly. 

“You were?”

You nodded, holding up the novel you had previously attempted to attack him with.  _ Of Human Bondage _ .

“You read it?”

“Well, I  _ am  _ reading it. Present tense. I was hoping to have it finished this week, but…” You trailed off, shrugging. He was both surprised and flattered you had found time to make any headway in it at all, considering all of the reading Professor Walsh had assigned for the week. 

“What a coincidence,” He grinned, mirroring the action with his own book. He swallowed hard when you beamed back at him, your excitement written all over your face as you began to ask him for his opinions on various events and characters within the novel, and he was shocked that he managed to say anything coherent and intelligent at all when your eyes were shining so brightly. He swore he would reread Austen’s entire collected works if it would get you to keep looking at him like he’d hung the stars in the sky. 

You were just in the middle of a scathing review of Mr. Collins, a character who seemed to irk you in particular, when he managed to form a question of his own. 

“Why Austen?” He wondered. A frown found its way to your lips, and he forced himself to not let his gaze linger there for too long. You seemed confused by the broadness of the question, so he pressed on. “Last week you gave me a laundry list of reasons why you dislike  _ Of Human Bondage _ . I was just wondering… What is it you like so much about this book?”

You took a moment to think, your fingers drumming absentmindedly along the cover of the hardback that sat in your lap. Finally, an answer seemed to come to you. 

“I like that... No one in the novel falls for a girl just because she’s beautiful. Austen’s heroines are real women, like someone you’d want to be friends with. They’re strong and complicated, and people fall in love with their hearts and minds and  _ flaws  _ instead of just…” You trailed off for a moment. “You can  _ see _ yourself in an Austen novel, and I guess that gives me… hope.” The admission seemed to make you shrink in on yourself.

“Well, that’s what everyone really wants, right? To be understood?” Eddie asked, offering you a reassuring nod. 

“Exactly,” You agreed eagerly, your eyes meeting his once again. This time, however, you looked away quickly, opting to turn your attention towards your review of Maugham. 

* * *

The rest of the evening passed in much the same way as it had the previous week, with the two of you debating back and forth about various aspects of the books you’d read, the previous moments of heaviness slipping away as you both fell back into easy conversation. Once again, the first purple hints of daylight came far too quickly for Eddie’s liking, and he found himself walking alongside you on the bike path. 

“Hey, Eddie?” You said suddenly, catching his attention after a silence had fallen over you both. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad I met you,” You told him shyly. “It’s been nice to have someone to talk to for once. No one… Well, no one usually talks to me much. Thank you.”

“So, what are we reading next week?” Eddie asked, mustering up as much courage as he could. It was all worth it when your hand brushed against his in a way that he was almost certain was not an accident. 

“Maybe we could pick something neither of us has read next time,” You suggested, positively giddy at both the prospect of these meetings continuing, and at the idea of having a real friend. Lizzy Bennet was a wonderful companion, but you liked the idea of finally having a  _ two-sided  _ conversation. 

“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea,” Eddie agreed, and the two of you began making plans to dive into Tolstoy’s _Anna Karenina_ the following week. 

Smiling to himself as you went your separate ways, Eddie reveled in the feeling of being well and truly understood, maybe for the first time in his life. 

_ He’d see you again next week. _


End file.
